Monday, March 28, 2022                          

The Colony Palm Beach Pavilion Room 
155 Hammon Avenue
Palm Beach, FL 33480  

6:00 p.m. – Registration & Social
6:30 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. Speaker Presentation

Becky McDonald  will discuss Human Trafficking Part 2: Rescue, Restore, Empower   

Speaker Profile:

Becky McDonald, founder and president of Women At Risk, International (WAR) has spent three decades lifting women and children to lives of dignity and worth. As an organization, WAR exists to create circles of protection and hope around at-risk women and children through culturally sensitive projects. WAR currently addresses 14 different risk issues and works in over 40 countries, including the United States. Although WAR primarily functions as an aftercare organization, it is also heavily involved in advocacy. Becky is a highly-sought after speaker who travels the world, sharing WAR’s passion with churches, universities, communities, law enforcement, legal and medical societies, embassies and foreign governments and HomeLand Security.

Rebecca McDonald's resolve to help exploited women and girls around the world began to emerge as a teenager, when she put together relief packages for destitute families at a Bangladeshi hospital where her father worked in the 1970s. McDonald learned that Nehru, a local girl she'd befriended, had been raped by men in her family. When Nehru spoke out, those men poured acid down her throat "to teach her she had no voice," McDonald said. The girl never spoke again." The acid of her suffering burnt a hole in my heart and opened my eyes to issues all around me," McDonald said. The experience also led to her to life's work: helping thousands of women and children in countries around the world escape from abuse, sexual slavery, honor killings, human trafficking and prostitution. “

McDonald incorporated WAR International in 2006. The organization works with safe houses, orphanages, rescue groups and other agencies in the U.S. and 21 other countries — including Thailand, India and Cambodia — to locate and try to intervene to help women and girls who are being exploited in the sex trade. WAR International's partners provide shelter and protection to the women and girls, teach them skills to support themselves through other means and provide help to get a high school diploma or college degree. In 2008, WAR International also began selling clothing, jewelry and crafts handmade by the rescued women to help fund the group's anti-trafficking efforts.  According to the U.S. State Department's 2010 Trafficking in Persons report, at that time there were 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor or forced prostitution around the world. The number has increased in recent years. It's not a crime that occurs only overseas. Online advertising services in the U.S. have come under fire for hosting ads for child prostitution. Currently the FBI is leading nationwide sting operations that have resulted in the arrest of adults involved in child prostitution rings.